Google derived its name from the word "googol", a term coined by then nine-year-old Milton Sirotta, nephew of the American mathematician Edward Kasner. The story goes, Kasner had asked his nephew to invent a name for a very large number - ten to the power of one hundred (the numeral one followed by 100 zeros), and Milton called it a googol. The term was later made popular and in Kasner's book, Mathematics and the Imagination, which he co-authored with James Newman. Later, another mathematician invented the term "googolplex", which represents ten to the power of a googol - a substantially larger number.

Some useful links about Google:

Google Internet Search page

Google Language Tools

As Google is now the world's most popular search engine, its association with a number so vast is appropriate. According to http://www.google.com, "Google's use of the term [Google] reflects the company's mission to organize the immense, seemingly infinite amount of information available on the web."* In fact, this mission itself grows increasingly large daily, as the Internet continues to grow exponentially throughout the world.

History of Google
In 1995, Google's founding partners Larry Page and Sergey Brin met as students at Stanford University, where they began to collaborate on a search engine called BackRub. As this highly promising project developed, the two students managed to attract investors, and Google Inc. opened for business on September 7, 1998 in Menlo Park, California - like many promising IT companies, in a sublet garage. The company grew rapidly, along with site traffic, and in 1999 Google was named in Time magazine's Top Ten Best Cybertech list.

In recent years, Google has introduced a host of useful new features and products, including Google AdWords pay-per-click service, AdSense, the Google toolbar, and Froogle, a shopping search service first launched in December 2002. Finally, in 2004, the company went public, using an innovative electronic auction program to sell initial shares.

Despite becoming a corporate monolith, Google has retained its hip, youthful image, and its dynamic corporate culture with an accent on fun (e.g., skateboarding in the parking lot) remains intact.

Languages of Google
Google may be used in many languages - even Esperanto! Just click on the links below.